The need to accurately position—and reposition as a new application may require—one or more items for proper operation of systems and apparatus has been known in several industries for years. Perhaps the most well known such position control apparatus is a side guide position control apparatus, which find application in the bottling industry to maintain proper position of containers (bottles or cans, as but two examples) as they travel along a conveyor during processing (filling, capping, etc.). A similar type of position control apparatus may operates as part of a palletizing system to maintain the proper position of pallets as they travel along a conveyor, whether for pallet manufacture or pallet loading. Position control apparatus may also find application as part of a differential valve controller, an HVAC mixing control system (as a substitute for expensive blowers) and a programmable vehicle suspension system (where ground clearance is controlled), as but three of many examples. Indeed, the inventive position control apparatus disclosed and claimed herein may be used to control the position of components of a system, where such components may benefit from repeated monitoring and adjustment to assure proper positioning (e.g., during a single “run” on a single bottle size) and/or, particularly in systems that are usable to process differently sized items (e.g., bottles of different sizes), where components need to have their position adjusted before a specific “run” (e.g., on a different bottle size), depending on the size of an item processed during that “run.”
There have been attempts in the past to provide position control systems that repeatedly monitor and accurately adjust component(s) to assure proper positioning and/or facilitate adjustments necessitated by the different size of an item processed during a specific “run.” However, such systems appear prohibitively costly, unnecessarily complex, and/or simply do not afford all the benefits afforded by the inventive technology.